What plastic pollution is doing to my paradise on island Hvar

It´s been almost 2 weeks since I arrived to my little paradise in Hvar. My mornings would start, with a coffee of course and than I would jump on my surf (hand-made trash treasure from the village) with a small kids “fishing net” in my hand and with plan to collect all plastic that might be floating around. Some days are better than others. And even on a good days, I know trash is still out there, but the waves and wind took them somewhere else.

And from all days, yesterday was by far the worst. It was just not possible for just one person to handle this. Believe me, I tried. I was pedaling around and collection all the plastic from the sea, while everybody else were looking at me like I´m crazy, or I get paid to do that. But I guess trash doesn´t bother them, since they continued swimming around in it and not bother to help out. After more than an hour I paddled back to the house with a surf full of trash, not even angry anymore, just really sad. In front of my beach a boat passed by and the lady looked at me with a really sad face, I guess she felt sorry for me and what other people are doing to my paradise, my eyes watered up. Hopefully, she will remember me and think a little bit about her own trash and even pick some plastic from the sea and beach during her stay on the island.

Most of the trash that was floating around was food packaging, plastic cups, straws, plastic sandals, sticks from ear buds or lollipops, bottles, bags, different nets, even an injection needle, toothpaste and a lot of plastic that sun and sea already breaks down into little pieces.
From all the packaging it was clear the plastic comes from Croatia, Italy and Albania.

I noticed some new containers for plastic and paper on the island, but I have to check what really happens with that plastic, where does it really end up. The containers are not in every town or village on the island. On the South side – Zavala there are just normal containers so I drove my paper to Stari Grad.

Next to that we took out the whole refrigerator. It might be dumped in the sea or it could be that it rolled down from one of the landfills on the islands … but one thing is sure, it does not belong there and people should start taking responsability for their waste.

Let´s go back to pre-plastic way of living

Do you remember what your grandma used in her household before plastic came around? Now just do the same. Get a cotton bag, grab some glass containers, vinegar, wooden brush for washing the dishes, wooden toothbrush, carton boxes, cotton napkins and tissues,
In some shops they understand and support my cotton bags, in other shops they are just confused since the bags are free and they have a lot of them so I can just take as many as I want. Say NO to PLASTIC BAGS. We can´t change people overnight, but we have to start somewhere.

This Zero Waste town in Japan should be example for Croatian islands

The residents of Kamikatsu, a town of 1,700 sort their trash to different bins for paper, cans, plastic bottles and caps. They sort their trash into 34 different categories. It might seam like an overkill, but this small Japanese town is on a mission to become the countries first “zero-waste” community by 2020. And they are getting pretty close. They already recycle about 80% of their trash, with the last 20% going into a landfill. They decided to become zero-waste town after the town gave up the practice of dumping trash into an open fire for fear of endangering both the population and the environment.

“If you get used to it, it becomes normal. Now I don´t think about it. It became natural to separate the trash correctly” said the resident of Kamikatsu.